


Longer Then Forever

by Quoth_the_Raven_Nevermore_Nevermore



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Character Death, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:22:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quoth_the_Raven_Nevermore_Nevermore/pseuds/Quoth_the_Raven_Nevermore_Nevermore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Arthur thinks that he'll love Merlin longer then forever. Longer then this world will exist, until the sun implodes and the earth shatters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longer Then Forever

 

 

Arthur sits in the tiny uncomfortable waiting room chair. Merlin had asked him to come along – had half begged – but he wouldn't let him come in the room with him, had made him miss an important meeting,

Arthur shakes his head, Merlin was being paranoid, he'd just lost Gaius.  
  
There was nothing wrong. Nothing. This is nothing but a cold. Nothing. Merlin was being ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Merlin is pale.  
  
He looks frightened.  
  
Arthur finally starts to believe this isn't just nothing.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
The drive to the hospital is quiet. Utterly quiet. Arthur is almost glad, he didn't think he could deal with Merlin trying to tell him it's going to be alright.  
  
The terrible word Oncologist is stuck in his mind.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Leukemia is a worse word then oncologist any day.  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Arthur holds Merlin tight that night in a way that he hasn't in years.  
  
Since they were young, scared, and so in love that nothing besides each other mattered. He wondered where those two people went. He wondered why he hadn't noticed when they had started to sleep on opposite sides of the bed instead of in the middle wrapped up in each other.  
  
Arthur isn't ashamed to say that he cries into Merlin's soft raven locks as the man slumbered in his arms.  
  


 

* * *

 

 

  
 _"Arthur, go away."_  
  
Arthur shakes his head, and kneels down next to Merlin, who is slumped between the toilet and the shower. He shifts the man until he can slide in so that Merlin is leaning against his chest; he wonders why it had to be Merlin.  
  
Arthur ran his hands through Merlin's thinning locks. The sterile hospital white burns his tear filled eyes.  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

  
_"I can't do this!"_

He doesn't mean it the way it comes out, but he's angry and he's hurt, and it aches deep inside him to see Merlin like this, pale and thin and so terribly tired looking.  
  
 _"Yeah well I didn't ask you to! I didn't ask you to, Arthur! I told you in the beginning I'd understand if you didn't want to stay! I've known for awhile that we were falling apart, that we weren't the same. Long before this fucking cancer! This marriage has been a sham for so long now that i can't even remember what it was like to know that you love me and to never have to question it! You can go, I don't care, it doesn't matter anymore!"_

And because Arthur's hurting too, he answer's back with just as much venom.

" _Do you really want me to go, Merlin? You'll be alone, oh wait, you must be used to that by now, because all you do is attract misery!"_  
  
 _"Go!"_  
  
Arthur does.  
  


 

* * *

 

 

  
Arthur wanders the city. It's big and bright and deafening and he wonders what Merlin would think of it all. Merlin who, despite having moved to the city thirteen years ago, is still a country boy at heart. He thinks of Merlin trapped in that hospital room and he wonders how he could leave him there, but he also wonders how he could go back.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Arthur wakes up the following morning in his car with a killer hangover and tear tracks on his cheeks and the fear that something has gone terribly wrong.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
He drives to the hospital to be met by an empty room and a doctor with a serious face that tells him all that's happened since he left the night before.  
  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Merlin looks small. He looks broken too, but Arthur tries to ignore that. The nurses had instructed him that he had five minutes before he would have to leave the room. They'd looked at him with sympathetic smiles and pity and he'd hated it.  
  
He hated this more.  
  
He sits in a chair that's pulled up to the side of the bed and takes Merlin's needleless hand into his own. His skin is pale and beneath the oxygen mask his lips are tinted blue.  
  
How had he left last night? Hadn't they - once upon a time - had a thing about not going to bed angry, that you stayed and you talked, because love was always worth more than pride. He'd been told that Merlin had cried himself to sleep only to wake up unable to breath and with a fever, he'd been lucky to have the prescience of mind to press the call button otherwise – the nurse had looked guilty here – he would have probably suffocated.

Community-associated pneumonia, he thinks, had he brought it in? People at his firm had been sick recently? Was this is fault?

Would Merlin die because of him?

 _Dear god_ , he thinks, _please no._  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Arthur doesn't believe in god like Merlin does, has never had Merlin's faith that there is something more to this world, that this celestial being loves them, but for Merlin?  
  
He prays.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Merlin crashes in the middle of the night and Arthur – who had been there for his hourly five minute visit – didn't think he would ever forget the sight of that solid red line, nor the sound of that long, final, and utterly horrible, beep that went on, and on, and _on_.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
The doctors don't make him leave after they finally get Merlin stable. Arthur knows what they think, he knows they think Merlin is going to die, that he can't bounce back from this; he knows that they are already counting Merlin as one of the lost.  
  
But they don't know Merlin.  
  
Arthur does.  
  
"Merlin," he starts, "you are not allowed to leave. Not like this, you can't leave me. I was a fucking idiot who couldn't deal, but it doesn't mean you can leave! You need to get better and wake up - " he breathes, his breathe catching in his throat around the lump, but he won't cry yet, Merlin isn't gone. " - and you need to call me horrible, and a prat, and we need to talk, because i'm not losing you, not to this and not to my own pride, or to your own. Whatever is malfunctioning between us - we need to fix it. So you need to hurry up and get better."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It's a miracle the doctor says. That Merlin's body is fighting again instead of giving up, and shutting down, Arthur doesn't believe in miracles though.  
  
Arthur believes in Merlin.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Merlin comes out of the ICU on a Tuesday.

Arthur misses a meeting and is there to walk beside him as they bring him up to the Oncology Ward, he'd experienced a set back and he'd be here a little longer, and the chemo would have to be stronger, but Merlin is strong, and Arthur believes in him. That is all that matters because Merlin is everything to him and the only miracle Arthur see's is sitting in a hospital bed.

Arthur is able to kiss Merlin for the first time in a month, and he swears he's never tasted anything better than Merlin.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Two months later, he doctor smiles and utters the five words that Arthur has only dreamed about.  
  
 _"Congratulations you're in remission, Merlin."_  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
The night Merlin is released from the hospital they make love like they haven't in years.

 

 

* * *

  
  


They renew their vows three months later.

Arthur doesn't think he has ever seen Merlin look as handsome as he does the day he slides a ring onto his finger for the second time in their lifetime and say's 'i do'.

Merlin's smile that day is something that Arthur thinks he will remember for years to come. He will never forget, he thinks, how important this one creature was to him. He thinks that this man in is in his arms right now is something special, and he thinks no matter how long they live, that he's never letting go again.

  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Arthur stares in horror at the black and blue dots that trail up Merlin's spine as he curls against Arthur's side. Thinks of the headaches, and the stomach pain, and how tired Merlin has been after work.  
  
It'd been three years.  
  
This couldn't be happening  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Arthur sits next to Merlin as the doctor explains how they'd caught it too late this time. That no treatment could help him now, that he was even beyond the help of a bone marrow transplant.  
  
Arthur punches the stupid man who can deliver something like that to them with nothing on his face except a sad smile right in the nose. Merlin's outraged cry is lost within the sound of his own harsh breathing and sobbing.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
 _"Do you remember - back in high school?"_  
  
Arthur chuckles, Merlin's arms are rapped around his waist and they're wrapped in every blanket they own in the center of their big king size bed. It's something they've been doing more often now and Arthur can't imagine he has anywhere else he'd rather be. He's not leaving Merlin, not now, if he went - when he went, because Arthur see's how sick he is, how he does very little but sleep now, know's of the rows of tiny, brightly colored, capsules for nausea and pain, knows that it won't be long - then he was going to go in Arthur's arms, in their own home.   
  
Merlin breathes out, and Arthur runs his hands through Merlin's dark hair that had thinned from the inablility to take in enough food to keep his body going.   
  
He remembers, he remembers being a teenager that hated Merlin, had bullied him because Merlin was able to be who he was without being afraid of himself, until one day Merlin looked at him all electric blue eyes and unruly raven hair, had yelled at him and Arthur couldn't find it in himself to hate him anymore.  
  
 _"Yeah, i remember."_  
  
 _"Did'a ever think we'd end up here?"_  
  
Arthur thinks about ticking clocks and raven haired angels, and schoolboys, and friendship, and yes, love, and shakes his head.  
  
 _"No, never."_  
  
Merlin laughs the sound soft and breathy.  
  
 _"Me neither, Arthur?"_  
  
Arthur nuzzles Merlin's shoulder.   
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
 _"You know i love you forever, right?"_  
  
And Arthur thinks that he'll love Merlin longer then forever. Longer then this world will exist, until the sun implodes and the earth shatters and knows that this isn't the end. Perhaps they'd lived before, loved before, or perhaps this is there first lifetime, but even if they don't, because Arthur still finds it hard to believe in things like that, to believe in things he can't find concrete evidance of - Arthur knows that they way they've bonded is something that is forever, that, because matter can't be created or destroyed, even if they never live again they'll be together forever. That they've imprinted each other onto the very essence of their two souls. That in this way, whether they live consciously or not, they'll always be together.  
  
 _"Yeah, me too."_  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Its the next morning  that Merlin doesn't wake.

Arthur takes a handful of Merlin's pain pills and follows Merlin into the unknown.  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> What did'ya think?


End file.
